Book Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

By Ed Brubaker 

4 Stars

Someone has been killing people from Captain America's Past. People the captain cared for and people he hated. In his quest to hunt down the unknown assassin, the star-spangled man experiences forgotten memories erupting into his present mind. Memories of the war and of his dead sidekick, Bucky. However, these memories are not what they seem; they don't reflect what really happened, and Cap knows it. Something or someone is tampering with his head. The assassin is elusive and highly trained, and his footprints appear in major assassinations throughout the 20th century. Nick Fury believes that the assassin confirms an old Cold War myth of an unageing soviet hitman, a Winter Soldier. This is a great book, great enough to be the basis for the second Captain America Movie. The author, Ed Brubaker, is known for his noir mysteries and crime fiction, so a thriller about an international assassin would fit right into his line of work. The book is centred around the big mystery of the assassin's identity, followed by the smaller mystery of the assassin's motive, which is not what you'd assume based on his identity. Throughout the book, Captain America has flashbacks that don't make sense, which is the third even smaller mystery of "who is messing with Captain America's head." The one issue within the book is, through no fault of its own, it's almost 20 years old and has had a popular movie adaptation, which makes it so that most people probably know the identity of the assassin. Unfortunately, this is the biggest thing the book has going for itself, and it doesn't have much to offer outside of the big mystery, which makes it almost perfect, but with one thing preventing my full enjoyment. 

Reviewed by Gavin 

View in Library Catalogue: Graphic Novel